Sound Recordist Teams

Here is how the work lines up. A full Canadian sound-recordist department staffs three positions on a senior union job — production sound mixer at the head of the department, boom op at the microphone, and utility sound technician handling wireless rigging, cable runs and second-boom support. All three sit inside one of three IATSE locals based on shoot region: 891 British Columbia for Vancouver. The BC interior, 873 Toronto for the Greater Toronto Area and Pinewood Toronto Studios, and 514 Quebec for Montreal and the MELS Cité du cinéma slate.

Here is how the picture comes together. The senior-mixer pool draws on Lou Solakofski and Mark Berger's re-recording legacy and the working production-sound bench of David Husby (Schitt's Creek), Glen Gauthier (many Canadian Screen Awards), Christopher Boyes on the supervising-editor side, and the wider generation that shipped Star Trek Discovery and Strange New Worlds (Toronto), The Handmaid's Tale (Toronto), The Boys (Toronto), Sicario and Arrival (Quebec exteriors), and Dune Part Two second-unit (Newfoundland and Alberta). On a series shoot a single mixer-plus-boom-plus-utility team can sustain twelve-to-fourteen episode orders. On a feature the team mostly adds a second boom for ensemble scenes and a dedicated playback op for music sync.

Here is what we have to work with. Training pipelines feed the department through Vancouver Film School, Sheridan College Oakville, Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson), Concordia Montreal and the NFB-adjacent documentary programmes at Université de Montréal. New entrants often come up as utility sound or third-boom before stepping up to first-boom, then graduate to bag-mixer documentary work before taking a feature credit as production sound mixer. Rate cards run under the IATSE 891, 873 or 514 collective agreement applicable to the region, with meal penalties, turnaround minimums and late hours tiers spelled out in each local's most recent contract.

Here is the layout. Our coordinators handle the union forms — register call sheets with the local, confirm safety training currency including BCAMP for British Columbia and the Quebec CNESST film-set safety certification, and submit the daily timecards through the production accountant for direct deposit. Global co-productions and US studio jobs filming under the IATSE 873 Toronto card pay scale comfortably above the comparable IATSE Local 695 Los Angeles rates once the Canadian dollar exchange and the federal CPTC and PSTC tax credits are factored in.